ALT(R)
ALT(R) is a site-responsive exchange ritual presented by Big Car Collaborative for Spark on the Circle that highlights scent’s capacity as a vessel for memory and agency. Conceived in dialogue with the Soldiers and Sailors Monument—a towering emblem of triumph and permanence—ALT(R) counters stone with breath, continuity with evanescence.
Drawing from precolonial Visayan cosmology, the perfume is composed of botanicals historically present throughout South and Southeast Asia: ylang ylang, citrus, sampaguita, elemi resin, vetiver, patchouli, and sandalwood. These notes form a complex, woody, and floral profile—an embodied invocation of the land. Each bottle becomes a portable offering, carried on the body and released into the air, making the wearer a living site of remembrance.
ALT(R) invites participants to move through public space as carriers of an invisible monument—one that resists erasure not by carving ourselves in stone, but through the persistence of breath, touch, and shared intimacy—a means of healing, and a call to remember what history leaves unsaid.
